With today’s announcement of iOS 8, my Twitter feed blew up with one common theme: How does iOS 8 compare to Android and what does this mean for Android? Let’s take a brief moment to discuss these topics.

Now that you’re all caught up… Time and time again we’ve seen major iOS releases with major features revealed and the same thing always happens. There is no one feature, or couple features, that is going to totally change the mobile market. Despite what some alarmists might want you to think, the market is much more complex than that. Sorry, third-party keyboard support in iOS 8 isn’t going to make $700 phones more affordable or change the marketing budget for Samsung. If you see an article saying that iOS 8 is signaling the end of Android’s dominance in the market, walk away.

The one key thing you can takeaway from today’s iOS 8 announcement and what it means for Android is this: it’s great for Android. How is it great for Android? It shows that Google still needs to be on their toes. Right now, Google and Apple are really the only two major players pushing each other forward. Through Jelly Bean and KitKat, Google has released some amazing features and services. Apple is responding with iOS 8. Google will respond with whatever major update comes next.

iOS 8 will get a ton of attention for the next couple weeks, and then Google I/O will come and Android will get a ton of attention for a couple weeks. This is how it works. If iOS 8 were to completely change the direction the industry’s been going for the last couple years, I’m not the only one who would be blown away.

There were a lot of interesting things announced and said today (Apple is releasing a new programming language, they mentioned Google search a couple times–think about that how you will–and Apple is clearly getting very close with Microsoft), but nothing that’s going to turn the industry on its head.

iOS 8 is not featureless in front of Android. True, Android used to prevail in many areas when compared to iOS, but iOS has begun its own quickly developing and already extremely large niche some time ago that given iOS 8, Android has become a toy for color customization and right now, has been blown away with features like Continuity and the Health and HomeKits. But hey! If I ever need to make my text bubbles red, or make my phone app call using Google Voice, I’ll find my Note 3

You do realize for the past 3 years I would say at least Apple has been adding features that Android already has? That includes the ones you named. I don’t even mean to entertain your ignorance, but I feel like you need to know.

Welcome to ginger bread. All the important features in ios8 were in ginger bread or earlier. (Custom keyboard, 3rd party notifications, app integration). You still have to wait another 2 or 3 years if you have to use file manager, able to attach or play all file types, sideload apps. You got multitasking 3 years after android. Happy waiting and good luck with next os version.

**Custom keyboard? I have yet to see one of my friends using Android that ACTUALLY USE a custom keyboard.
**3rd party notifications? iOS already has that. Get your facts straight
**App integration? I’ll give you that one, but since we all know Apple users actually use the devices for more things than just a feature phone (i.e. receive calls, and send a few text), this will feature will become much more relevant in the hands of iPhone users
**File Manager? Who cares. I can guarantee you 0.01% of Android users care about this
**Play all file types? VLC app takes care of this
**Sideload apps? Now you’re talking nonsense.

3.6 versions ahead? Are you fucking retarded or something? They’re different softwares from different companies and follow different naming schemes. This was one of the dumbest things I’ve read all year.

I am sure ios 8 will bring a lot of new features, probably features that have been around in Android for years. Is there support for third party launchers or browsers? Does ios 8 let you customize at all? Or is it the same old boring iphone? Let’s not even get into the lack of hardware apple has in their phones, that would be too much. When iphone can tell you exactly how long of a drive it is to work, like Android, I may give them another shot, but right now their so far begind

Decision 1) – is it robust well supported OS?
Decision 2) – what is cheapest.

Sorry but I stop there and don’t consider IOS. Android wins as its robust, well supported and is plain cheapest. No need to move to IOS. Of course the decision is to people who invested in IOS stick with it and continue to pay more due to inertia?

Honestly my decision to go with Android didn’t even need the price to be a consideration. I wanted an OS that could be customized to my liking and was available on a device that fit my needs. My mom recently got an iPhone and playing with that is my longest exposure to iOS. I’m just blown away at the level to which you aren’t allowed to make the device yours. The simple fact that you can’t even have apps in an app drawer instead of having each and every one scattered about on your home screens (or whatever apple calls them) or hidden away in folders at best was amazing to me. I like a clean interface and that’s apparently just not an option with an iPhone. Have 50 apps? Here are all 50 icons on your screen all the time! >.<

Apple is playing catch up once again. I guess we will have to wait for Google’s announcement at I/O to see what IOS9 will bring next year.

Its funny how they compared running android versions to iOS. They can do so because their supported hardware is extremely limited. While it would be nice for all Android phones to be able to run the latest OS when it is released, its not worth sacrificing every Android phone to use the same hardware layout.

With Windows Phone 8.1, Microsoft can catch up very. Giving that the licences are free, the software more stable, secure, light and simple, this is much more threatening for Android than IOS 8. Well, nobody knows, but i won’t be surprised to see some trend reversal in the next few years.
For the rest of the keynote, i find that Mac OS X 10.10 is more thrilling than IOS 8. Too bad that all these exciting stuff (WiFi call, ect…) will only be possible with an iPhone or iDevice. But Microsoft should take some lessons here : this is how a modern OS should look like and behave.

With the news of the Nexus program going away, the selling of Motorola, and the closing of the factory in Texas I have a really bitter taste in my mouth with Google right now. Im VERY interested to see what Google rolls out at I/O. Now more than ever I am considering hanging up my Android flag for a bit and jumping ship to iOS8. I do like using Nova launcher and switching out the icons and such but when it comes down to it, these cosmetic changes have nothing to do with the functionality. Im excited to see what happens!!!

I’ve spent two years with Andriod and it’s not been fun. It was gift so I gave up my precision tooled iPhone for a samsung egg box cut out with kitchen scissors galaxy. Bugs like crazy. Ive spent two years on forums, watching youtube videos trying to get this thing to work right. Hardly any of the ‘features’ work at all. I do love the screen size and swype keyboard. Happy to see Apple copy Android in all ways, only diffence is that they make the Android innovation (credit where it’s due) work.